Over the years, I have used only a few of the light weight desktops (mostly just playing around, nothing lengthy in time or usage), sticking mostly with KDE or Gnome variations. I have had some issues with KDE 4 and especially Gnome 3 and have thought about giving some of the other desktops a whirl.

I have a question before I begin. It took me a long time to get over the changes from KDE 3 to KDE 4 and I haven't even tried Gnome 3 yet. (I am a bit of a dinosaur and don't like massive amounts of changes in a short period of time) Anyway, are there any of the lighter weight desktops that give you any amount of desktop configuration as compared with KDE 3/4 or Gnome 2.x? I like to use my own choices of desktop icons and be able to place them where I want them.

All input is welcomed and thanks in advance for your responses.

I think you would enjoy Xfce and/or LXDE. Give them a try! What distro are you using?

I have 3 installed, Mepis 11, aptosid 11-3 & Debian 6.0.4, but I was thinking of trying Vector Linux 7.0 Light. The partition set that my Debian is installed on, I usually use for testing purposes. I'm just curious I suppose.

You didn't mention anything about the configurability of the 2 desktops you mentioned.....


Thanks for the input!

LXDE and Xfce are available for Debian and all Debian-based derivatives.

They are very customizable as you can see here:

http://xfce-look.org/
http://lxde.org/lxappearance_change_look_feel

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Interesting, but not exactly what I meant. I mean mostly about the ability to add, subtract, and place desktop icons. I'm sorry if I confused you, I should have worded things better. My fault, and thanks again!!

LXDE and Xfce both feature desktop icons, to the best of my knowledge.

Personally I can't stand them, so I'm not the guy to ask for help organizing them.

I understand, and thanks anway.

You can certainly do that in Xfce and you can choose to, for example, have mounted removable media displayed on the desktop or not. It also allows you to add and remove panels and add shortcuts and plugins to those.
I think LXDE offers something similar but in my experience it's not quite as tweakable as Xfce though I would wait to hear from someone who uses LXDE rather than take my word for it.

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LXDE tends to fall between two stools. If you want to configure something that the developers thought you'd want to, then its tools are as good as anyones. But if you want to do something else, you have to edit a file. Unfortunately, instead of a collection of small files simply laid out, as in the window managers, you get one huge file full of xml markup and with little documentation.

You sound like a candidate for Xfce. It's got everything that KDE and Gnome have, except bloat. And it's been going longer than they have, so it must be doing something right.

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Thanks for all the input guys. I've downloaded a couple of Debian based distros (Saline & Snow) using an Xfce desktop to try out. Not sure when I am going to install them, but I'll try to post back and reveal my progress and impressions.

May I ask why you didn't decide to use Debian? Admittedly you have to choose to install XFCE after initial installation, but Debian itself is well worth trying.

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For the reason you stated. I like Debian, right now, Squeeze with Gnome is what is installed on my testing partitions. I wanted to try something different.

EDIT - I took your suggestion and installed xfce on my existing Debian 6.04. Xfce kind of reminds me of a poor man's Gnome 2.x sort of, I can work with that. It might not be an exact fit, but I am curious now just how flexible it is and how close I can get it to what I want. THANKS!!!!!!!